Objection: It Makes No Sense to Say That Jesus Bore Our Sins but Only ONE of Their Consequences (Sickness)

As demonstrated elsewhere, Jesus actually bore both sickness and poverty for us in our place, so sickness is not the only consequence of sin that He bore. 

He bore the parts of the curse that it was possible for Him to bear, given that He had no wife, children or animals who could have partaken of other parts of the curse.

Sin and sickness are always closely intertwined in Scripture.  Jesus made it clear that forgiven people can be healed when He forgave and healed the paralytic who was let down through the roof (Luke 5:17-26). David urged himself to bless the Lord who “forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases” (Psalm 103:3).  When atonement was made for sins, healing followed.  (See Healing and Atonement for a thorough discussion of that.)  How much more should healing follow Christ’s atonement for sins!

Some curses would only come upon Israel if it sinned as a nation, but sickness is an individual curse (like poverty) that can befall an individual regardless of what happens to other people around him.

To some extent, saying that it makes no sense that Jesus bore sickness is the clay telling the potter that he made a mistake.  Isaiah makes it clear that He “bore our sicknesses and carried our pains” (Isaiah 53:4) when He was “a man of pains and acquainted with sickness” (Isaiah 53:3) when God “made Him sick” (Isaiah 53:10) in our place.  He certainly bore our sicknesses, which no reader of the literal Hebrew in Isaiah 53 should be able to deny.  The punishment that brought us shalom (well-being, including prosperity) was upon Him (Isaiah 53:5).

My question back at the objector would be, “Given that Jesus bore disease and poverty in our place as a curse for sin, what else exactly would you expect Him to bear when He was our Substitute?”  It seems to me that sickness and poverty were the two expressions of the “curse of the Law” that He could take upon Himself.  The sickness part would include all mental illness, anguish, torment and confusion, which were spelled out as part of the curse.  After that, what else is there that He could have borne as an individual other than the general cursedness of sin?  He certainly bore that, too, as He was “made a curse” (Galatians 3:13) for us when He “became sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Regardless of how you feel about how God actually did it, the fact remains the “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13).  What Jesus bore was obviously sufficient payment in God’s eyes to redeem us from the curse, and if it’s good enough for God, it’s good enough for me.